We have monthly family get togethers for my husband's large family and for the past few years they've happened at his parent's house down in Gardnerville. Nowadays most of the kids are going to college at the University and living up in Reno, so the parties have migrated to our house. This month's get together, in celebration of Jake's Grandma's birthday, was one of them.
Typically we bbq some hot dogs and hamburgers and gorge ourselves on chips and dip beforehand. This time the in-laws came up with a brilliant plan, they brought catering from Mimi's Cafe. And can we all say amazing development? It was delicious, easy for everyone and from what I gathered, relatively inexpensive.
Anyways, I decorated the house up for this party, using some cute party-ware I've had stashed accentuated with pink crepe paper that I swear has been breeding in my craft closet since my baby shower.
Remember last week when I was all "everyone sends up packages" In true awesome fashion that is my family, my Grandma sent Gwen some cute outfits just the other week (thanks Grandma!). She picked her out this cute little party dress that Gwen got to wear for the party.
She took the bow on and off about 20 times before everyone came over. And after hours of cleaning our house which needed a little TLC, we sat down and waited for the troops to arrive.
And then, we partied. Here's where I shamefully admit that the only photos I have are of myself, Grandma and the baby. I hate being the awkward forceful person who's telling people to pose for the camera. Or I'm completely narcissistic or a blogger. Aren't those practicaly interchangeable? Yikes.
We ate, we chatted, we had ice cream pie from Baskin Robins. Let me stop here and say screw ice cream cakes. Go to Baskin Robins and get you some ice cream pies. They have hot fudge as iciing! No joke, and instead of crappy cake that's been frozen, there's pie crust. Oh man, it was glorious.
Cake was followed by presents, which included an ipad, because Grandma is one hip Prius-driving-Apple-loving lady. We watched You Tube videos on her ipad and then popped out back for a nice fire in our backyard where we roasted s'mores.
A couple notes on this:
1.) It's illegal to burn a fire pit in your backyard in Northern Nevada. Did you know that? It's true and with good reason. Embers were flying everywhere and well, people can't be trusted with such things as fire in their backyard in the middle of the dry arid desert.
I called the fire station and asked, so this is for reals folks. Your husband isn't just being paranoid and trying to ruin everyone's summer fun.
That being said, we totally still had a campfire and were as responsible as possible and were lucky enough to not have been the idiots who accidentally lit the neighborhood on fire.
2.) Don't buy the huge campfire marshmallows. They are too big, so your marshmallow doesn't roast all the way through. They totally sucked.
Did I mention my husband has a rather large family? With five kids, parents, girlfriends, boyfriends, etc. the parties consist of 12-13 people. Back when we lived in our apartment I never would've imagined we'd have the capabilities to host the family get togethers. And here we are, having everyone over for dinner and s'mores. While we're not going to host Thanksgiving or Christmas anytime soon, it's nice to know that we can have that many people over for fun and enjoyment and everyone has a seat.
Sometimes life's just awesome like that, surprising you with abundance. I like that.
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